How to Establish a Property Set in GSC or Google Search Console

Read this article and discover what Property Set is and how to establish a Property Set in GSC or Google Search Console!

On May 23rd, Google announced Property Sets as part of GSC or Google Search Console. What exactly is Property Set?

Property sets allow you to link multiple websites together in Google Search Console and check aggregated data. Remember, when we are talking about a website in Google Search Console we don’t always think of a full site. As a matter of fact, they are organized by a protocol in GSC and subdomain, so the version www of the website differentiates from the non-www version. Also, the HTTPS version of a certain website differentiates from the HTTP version. For that reason, a standard website should have minimum four sites build up in GSC in order to cover the bases such as HTTPS www, HTTPS non-www, HTTP www, and HTTP non-www.

Domain Name Changes and Switching to HTTPS

When you plan to change your domain name, it is highly recommendable to analyze the change via GSC. You can check impressions and trend for clicks, review all the queries leading to the website over time, the average position of the queries in the search results, mobile data, and much more.

However, when changing domain names or switching to HTTPS, you need to review a new or second site in Google Search Console. Why is that?

This is related to what we mentioned earlier about the sites being organized by a protocol in GSC and subdomain. So, you can check the situation and analyze how impressions or clicks were impacted when you’ve changed the domain name with property sets.

When building up a property set, you can mix several sites in Google Search Console, which may include multiple domains. So, if you are planning on changing your domain, you can establish a property set with 8 different sites. For example the HTTP, HTTPS, WWW, and non-WWW versions of both domains (your existing domain name and your new domain name, the one you are switching to). Once, you are done, you can check and analyze the combined data from all eight sites in Google Search Console. This includes impressions, trending for clicks, average position for example, throughout the HTTPS migration and domain name change, page ranking, data by country, device, and much more.